EDITORIAL. 207 



American school system."" « And in the words of another: "If we 

 persist in our inexcusable failure to provide such variations during 

 the last years of our so-called elementary course, when individual 

 difl'erences appear with unmistakable and increasing force, we may 

 expect boys and girls to continue, as they do now, to seek in the more 

 tolerable occupations of street, factory, shop, office, and mercantile 

 house, the kind of interests for which they feel an instinctive though 

 vaguely defined need." ^ 



This is to say that beginning at about the thirteenth year the 

 economic interests and ambitions of youth begin to assert themselves. 

 The time is then ripe for an educational appeal that may win these 

 students to the continuation of a school course which recognizes the 

 natural inclination of this period and trains to a broader social use- 

 fulness. It is already evident that elemental agriculture preemi- 

 nently possesses the means for making such appeal highly effective. 

 And if the usual high school work in science, history, and language 

 is thus prepared for in the lower grades, the last four years of the 

 secondary course can be much more fully utilized than now for 

 intensive, purposeful study. The school and the student have the 

 right to expect these conditions from each other. 



Before any adequate summation of the advantages of agriculture 

 as introductory science study can properly be presented, a word 

 should be said in reference to agriculture as applied science. One of 

 the criticisms that has been offered upon the introduction of agricul- 

 tural courses in the high school is the fact that it has so frequently 

 been done without articulating the subject with the existing courses 

 in pure science. And with particular reference to domestic science 

 and agriculture it has been declared : " Before a pupil enters upon a 

 course in an applied science, he ought to have received training in 

 scientific method and habit of thought by studies in pure science, 

 preferably, of course, in those sciences which underlie the applied 

 science in question. Thus chemistry and botany at least should pre- 

 cede or accompany domestic science courses, and all the biological 

 and physical sciences are necessary to adequate teaching of agri- 

 culture." <' 



This doctrine is doubtless entirely sound with reference to ad- 

 vanced and technical courses in agriculture and domestic science, but 

 it is not a good argument for postponing all consideration of applied 

 science until students have abandoned the schools for lack of such 

 incentives to study. Pure science has little hold upon the interest 



" Dean James E. Russell, in the Educationa.1 Review, December, 1909. 

 *PrinciiJal J. D. Burks, in Proceedings of the National Education Associa- 

 tion, 1909, pp. 294-296. 

 c School Science and Mathematics, May, 1910, p. 378, 



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